Travel day began with all 60 of the squad flew from Atlanta, Georgia to Istanbul, Turkey and then from there to Johannesburg, South Africa. Exhaustion, but so much excitement doesn’t even fully describe what we were feeling when we finally reached Roma, Lesotho after a bus ride after landing in Johannesburg, South Africa. A total of 56 hours.
My team and I stayed in the vibrant city of Roma, about a 45-minute taxi ride from Maseru, the capital. The National University of Lesotho is located there and so we knew we would be doing college ministry. We stayed with our host family, Peter and his wife Sylvia, and two boys Tšiea, 9 years old and Lesego, who is 15, just 5 minutes from campus. The campus ministry that we worked with is called Life Ministry there, but in the States it’s most often called Campus Crusade for Christ.
On campus, we spent a lot of our time sharing about Jesus, hosted the movie “Matter of Faith”, and even attended a worship night where they sing in Sesotho and English. They even gave room for students to share songs or other expressive art. On Wednesday nights the team and I were able to lead worship and bible studies and connect with an incredible group of college students. That’s where some of the deep friendships were created.
In our village, we walked around and met many people, ate many _______, and spent a lot of our time at the Laratong Community Center.
The Leratong Community Center is about a 30-minute walk from our home. When students were released from school around 2:30pm, the center would begin flooding with kiddos as young as 5 and as old as 18. We partnered with them while they read us books to practice their English; we played games of soccer, laughed, danced, played keep-away and they taught us some Sesotho words and phrases. That place was definitely one of the highlights of being in Roma. We just absolutely loved these precious children of God.
On Sundays, the seven of us would pile into a 15 passenger taxi van, which somehow they would manage to fit 20+ early in the morning. It was no small feat to fill that thing up on a church morning though, and sometimes it took 45 minutes to fill before we could make our way to Maseru for the service. Maseru United Church, was an international church where familiar music was played, like Hillsong and Jesus Culture, and the service was always delivered in English. It was absolutely beautiful and full of God loving people! They were even so graciously allowed me and a few others to even join their worship team a couple of Sundays!! It was definitely one of those experiences I was amazed to be apart of! We fell in love with our church family!
After service, it was a guarantee that we made our way over to the main mall, called Pioneer, where we would grab lunch, get on wifi, shop, and pick up groceries for our team, since we cooked at home the rest of the week. On my favorite days we would make a stop at Ouh La La, a small French café in the middle of downtown, which was SO cheap and really yummy too! Oh and when we would make our way home, catching a taxi was always interesting!
Lesotho will forever have a special place in my heart with it’s beautiful scenery and people. God has begun an amazing work in my team and I and I can’t wait to see what’s next!
If you would like to pray for the country of Lesotho here are some things you can pray for:
– Maseru United Church
– National University of Lesotho
– Laratong Community Center
– Beautiful Gate Orphanage
– Life Ministry and other ministries on campus.
